Also, please don't make it difficult to look at with a giant ghosted overlay. The slight chance of plagiarism is not enough to offset the annoyance to hiring managers.
I think your woods are very monochromatic.
your ground texture is not nearly as polished as everything else, and stands out a lot. all your other textures are nice and smoothly painted. your ground texture is rough and looks scaled up.
i think the 'hands off' would work better without the curl. you're trying to sell a very 3-dimensional shape on a 2d plane that is shown very obliquely in your render, which just reinforces the fact that it's textured on.
Ah thanks for that link Eric, certainly need to read that. I had some problems with the stone texture from accidentally destroying some layers, so I will fix how it looks.
I don't have a site yet, I haven't done enough pieces, unless I should start one anyway?
Oh and any suggestions on how I can bring in more colour? Erghhh why can't I wrap my brain around wood being not just the one colour.
I feel like an asshole for critting a crit, but i seriously dislike that color overlay stuff saiainoshi. Looks very fake-artifical and visually unappealing.
What i would do instead is find some photos of old wooden objects (barrels, crates) on google or flickr and play with the saturation in photoshop -- there's a lot of subtle color variation going on in shadows and stains, they just may not pop out to the untrained eye without some coaxing.
20% is too strong for the paint overlay, because of this the results don't seem great.
However, it works wonders when at an extremely low opacity (like 4% - 6% range) because it uses the colors to add warmth to specific parts of the texture.
Fixed up the rock texture, the problem originally was i accidentally saved it (permanently)as 256x256, so it was scaled to 512 before . But it's all good now. I tried adding some colour variation to the timbers too (a shade of purple/grey and some warm red), still have some other things to change as critted above. thanks!
Oh and for those interested, I have written up my process on the sword as attached. As I mention I certainly don't claim it to be a tutorial, I mean as can be seen in this thread I'm not experienced enough for that! It's just to show how I did it and it may help some beginners like me. Thanks!
You've improved so much throughout this thread, its really awesome seeing that when it happens on polycount
Often times many people have great skill or natural talent but lack direction, a little push in the right direction and some focous goes a long way. :thumbup:
Not sure if this was mentioned, but it's been bugging me, the UV space for the barrel isn't very well used. It seems like you could get an extra couple vertical boards in there, for more variation, and at the same time make it tileable left/right. If it's part of the same bitmap as the crate, then you would need some padding left and right, but still it's wasted space that could be put to good use.
The sword and shield are looking great! You should go back to the other props and bring them up to that level, I've noticed that halfway through this thread the bands on your barrel went from sharp looking to kind of soft and blurry.
Your progress throughout this thread has been amazing to follow! If I could give you one more tip it would be to use some coloured shadows, and vary your colours more in general. The shadows alone will do wonders for avoiding that monochromatic look, and varying your colours on the rest will really push your textures to greater heights. And when you do, post it in here for our enjoyment
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Sure I'll name my work, mind my ignorance, why's that?
Also, please don't make it difficult to look at with a giant ghosted overlay. The slight chance of plagiarism is not enough to offset the annoyance to hiring managers.
I think your woods are very monochromatic.
your ground texture is not nearly as polished as everything else, and stands out a lot. all your other textures are nice and smoothly painted. your ground texture is rough and looks scaled up.
i think the 'hands off' would work better without the curl. you're trying to sell a very 3-dimensional shape on a 2d plane that is shown very obliquely in your render, which just reinforces the fact that it's textured on.
And it still needs branding of some sort (name, portfolio url, email too if you wish).
I don't have a site yet, I haven't done enough pieces, unless I should start one anyway?
Oh and any suggestions on how I can bring in more colour? Erghhh why can't I wrap my brain around wood being not just the one colour.
New layer, paint with 20% opacity, set layer to overlay and use BRIGHT colors like:
What i would do instead is find some photos of old wooden objects (barrels, crates) on google or flickr and play with the saturation in photoshop -- there's a lot of subtle color variation going on in shadows and stains, they just may not pop out to the untrained eye without some coaxing.
But adding some moss would work, and I do like the blue overlay
However, it works wonders when at an extremely low opacity (like 4% - 6% range) because it uses the colors to add warmth to specific parts of the texture.
Anyway, snow that came along great man good job.
EVERYONE HATES YOU, GO BACK TO YOUR HOLE!
Jk, its a good idea and could use variation, but pure random variation probably isn't the best option for this :P.
edit:Forget it, sorry stupid question, you answered it.
Often times many people have great skill or natural talent but lack direction, a little push in the right direction and some focous goes a long way. :thumbup:
very well done! i like this thread a lot!